Measuring one's technical progress

I might get flamed for this by internauts who will read this page. I'm running the risk of speaking about it anyway, musicians around here forgiveth me! This page is only about technique, and strictly about technique, there's nothing else in here, not an ounce of music. However it stems from the principle that musical feeling can be expressed easily with a sound technique that is not even thought of while playing. Technical difficulties hog brain's CPU that cannot thereby be used to improvise, and tensions coming from technical limits hinter letting oneself dive into musicality.

One of the greatest ways to be motivated is to see that applying a method comes with results: we're making progress. Yet this notion is fairly subjective. The way I measure my progress as objectively as possible is to take a set of typical licks spanning over various technical aspects of the style, cyclical if possible (that can be played in a loop), and to play them as fast as possible as long as they sound clean, that is with each note heard clear without any mistake. Then I can compare the tempos from one week to another and that's when I notice that I play a few bpms faster. This will to measure progress comes from the time when I was practising distance running and it proves a really useful tool.

Here's my indexed list of licks that I consider representative of the technical difficulties:

- AP1: alternate picking on one string in 16ths
- AP2: alternate picking with four notes per string
- AP3: alternate picking with two notes per string (1st pentatonic position in Gm6)
- SW: diminished sweeping
- VV1: v-v + sweeping (Rosenberg lick in A9)
- VV2: v-v Rosenberg lick on Viajeiro in A9
- VV3: v-v descending scale with 3 notes per string
- VV4: v-v octave lick from Biréli
- VVV: v-v-v typical exercise
- ARP: ascending and descending minor arpeggio
- RLL: Basic roll (video file)
- PO: lick with pull-off

I gather these indexes in a table, I play them cleanly as fast as I can and I write down those tempos in that table. Data can be compared from one week to another, or even from one day to another for the more regular ones. Bear inn mind that it is normal that speed goes down a bit from time to time, especially after intensive training weeks or if tired. Of course, you can customise this table with your own personal licks.

Setting goals

As far as I'm concerned, from a strictly technical viewpoint, the goals are to play these licks at tempos as closed as possible to those from the greatests in this style. The closer you get, the more motivated you are. I use the same table as before (the values are really ambitious I know):